


Science vs. Romance

by mercuria



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: (sort of), 00Q - Freeform, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Porn With Plot, Resolved Sexual Tension, Torture, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Waterboarding, spot the trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-19 16:24:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuria/pseuds/mercuria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q is, as everybody knows, exceptionally good at his job.</p><p>This may be why nobody notices he's in over his head.</p><p>(In which pretty much everyone makes questionable decisions, Q's ego and libido battle for supremacy, MI6 does not have a formal opinion, and Bond is a force of nature. There are a lot of significant pauses.</p><p>Chapter Six: Bond returns to London with an escort. Q and Bond fail to have a long-overdue conversation. MI6's medical branch gets stood up yet again. Don't think of it as an ending--more like an intermission.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alternative titles include "A Room With a Q (and Some Spies, and a Bond)" and "Sex in the Time of Espionage." The actual title comes from the Rilo Kiley song.
> 
> As always and ever, thanks to Adiva for the proofreading, idea-bouncing, speed-beta and MAJOR HAND-HOLDING.

The Silva incident was, one might reasonably presume, a nasty introduction to the world of espionage. Something to make you stop and think.

_What job did I just take on, and how many of my coworkers will be dead before the year’s up?_ The woman who hired him two months ago is dead, for God’s sake, you’d have to be made of stone. But Q, the jokes have long gone, probably has some kind of circuitry instead of a central nervous system. He takes it as a learning opportunity.

He prowls the length of his new domain at the rehabilitated MI6 HQ, checking for spots to plant explosives and microphones because Silva was right in one respect: If you want to penetrate this organization, you have to get by him first. After a few hours, he comes up with several means of bettering the security in here, highly rudimentary but also cost-free, which will doubtless please their new Mummy and makes _him_ feel better, at least.

He does a little digging into the statuses of the agents whose cover’d been blown. Two they got out in time, they’ve been given new identities and packed off to safety. The other three truly appear to be dead, which after everything is a relief.

It’s neater this way.

Cyanide capsules and keeping secrets and rogue agents hiding on islands—that sort of thing is exactly what’s the matter with this business. (They’ve all heard the stories by now, and checking up on mission reports he’s not, strictly speaking, supposed to know about is practically in his job description.) Too much human element in an inhuman job. When human elements go wrong, they have a tendency to go _very_ wrong.

He knows 007 would disagree with him, perhaps strenuously. Perhaps while pointing a gun. 007 is another problem.

Following the Silva incident, James Bond doesn’t disappear again into death, and he doesn’t drink—as far as Moneypenny can tell—any more than usual. He is no more suicidally reckless than his file would lead one to believe is typical, and he doesn’t start fights with M.

This makes everyone nervous.

Not that Q is the best at picking up on moods. Human moods, anyway; he can tell when machines are feeling finicky in a hundred directions, he’s invented more programming languages than most people ever learn to speak to each other. But in this case, it’s pervasive: Moneypenny’s flirting comes out baleful, M vacillates between concerned parent and exasperated bureaucrat, Tanner’s on eggshells. The other 00’s, none of them sociable creatures to start with, avoid him like a ghost.

It makes Q feel a bit sorry for him, when he remembers to think about it. So he doesn’t particularly mind when Bond comes prowling around Q-branch, at loose ends between missions, or on R&R orders that he largely ignores.

“Sniffing around for a gun and a radio?” Q says, the second or third time.

Bond’s eyebrows arch.

“If that’s all I’m going to get.”

“More than.” Q doesn’t remember exactly what he was doing at the time, but he recalls the satisfying _click-click-click_ of distant satellites lilting to his will. “I’m not under orders to outfit you for any missions right now, so please look and _don’t_ touch.”

He glances to 007, just to make sure the words have penetrated the brain and all that.

007 is glancing back. This is not exactly what tips Q off-balance, though he notes with dissatisfaction that Bond has an uncanny ability to wander into _his_ department yet behave as if Q’s just come into his living room. It’s the quality of his stance, the look in his eyes: something almost laser-focused.

It lasts just for a second before Bond’s mouth crinkles at the corners.

Easily, “That’s no fun.”

Q wonders then how Bond’s enemies see him, marks and mercenaries and conquests—if they recognize the danger there. Probably, being steeped in it themselves, if they do it’s the same way sharks recognize water.

 

Q doesn’t remember what exactly he says next, but it was the end of the conversation.

 

 ***

Some of MI6’s field agents are unflaggingly professional—just what you’d expect of soldiers who perform extremely dangerous jobs and receive little recognition. They take what they’re given and get on with it.

The 00’s are a stranger breed: more angles to bounce off of, to trap and deflect. They are assigned the top priority missions, the delicate ones, the ones that sap more of Q’s sleep and time than anything else. As Quartermaster, he primarily deals with them before—in that boys-with-their-toys stage of briefings and lobbying for the best gadgets and getting explanations of the gadgets they _do_ get—and after, to pick up shrapnel, put pieces together, and move on to the next mission.

It’s the ‘during’ that’s the tricky bit.

Mallory is ubiquitous, at first. Q’s new to the job, but M’s newer, and Q suspects it makes him feel better to supervise as many missions as he can find the time for. Q follows the 00’s, dots on a screen and voices in the room, allocating aid and explosions as needed. He gives them directions, relays questions.

M provides order: rules and aims and pertinent questions and the inevitable hard decision. He doesn’t nitpick, though. Not a backseat driver, M.

Q counts it among his blessings.

 

He’s picked up the rhythm of this place fairly quickly. He’s perfectly at home with codenames and hidden agendas and working insane hours; it’s the specific reality of MI6 that wants adjusting to. But MI6 helps you there: MI6 is nothing if not specific.

For example:

His codename is Q, and he assembles, disassembles, invents and diagnoses gadgets. He takes inventory and runs programs. He presses buttons and makes things appear—bank accounts, paper trails, itineraries, explosions. His direct superior is M; beyond that, and the looming specter of the prime minister, he does not strictly owe obeisance to anyone. He works until a given task is done.

Outside these parameters, MI6 provides opportunity but not strict guidance. He chats with Moneypenny when she comes bearing news, and with agents about various, typically mission-related topics. The field agents take precedence as a matter of course, like actors in a stage play. Q’s part of every mission and not part of it; undeniably a lifesaver, between his gizmos and his timely intervention, but undeniably out of the fray. His greatest on-the-job risk, excepting kidnapping and targeting by some sniper or ego-driven hacker, is carpal tunnel.

He’s still figuring out how many different routes he can take to work before he’ll have to cycle to the start of the list. He finds the job superior to any kind of social life, really, which is good because he hasn’t got the time for one.

(At the back of his mind, he wonders if 007’s all right, or if he’s really going to crack.)

 

***

“You can’t have that in here.”

Who even knows what time it is? Not Q. It’s a workshopping sort of evening, so instead of pounding away at his laptop, he is dissecting circuitry and not on speaking terms with clocks.

Evidently, though, he _is_ on speaking terms with 00’s bearing whiskey.

“Not building any exploding pens, are you?” said 00 inquires, mildly.

“Well, if I were,” Q replies without looking up (he’s gotten very good at not looking up at Bond), “I admit that blowing them up before they’d made it out of the lab would probably be some kind of record.”

“Not for me.” Q hears him sip, lips against the glass. “Check my file.”

“It’s horrifying reading, for an engineer. All that wanton destruction of technology.”

Bond just makes an amused sound at that, a low _hmph_.

“Wanton,” he says.

Q does not need to look up to read his expression. He retorts, right around his brain-to-mouth filter, “You let a komodo dragon eat my gun.”

There’s only so much longer he can fiddle with this piece before it becomes redundant. Waste of his time.

Meanwhile Bond is _laughing_ at him.

“I thought it was my gun,” he says. “Matched to my palm print, wasn’t it? Don’t tell me you’re still sulking.”

Q looks up to find 007 watching him, warm and amused. Most likely he has the scotch to thank for that, for the way his eyes are just as bright a blue but liquid instead of solid, sharp enough to cut.

Not, of course, that Q makes any kind of habit of gazing into anybody’s eyes.

“I never sulk,” he protests.

“You’re sulking now.”

“Hardly,” he corrects. “You’re drunk.”

“ _Hardly.”_ Bond glances down to his glass—honestly, did he bring it with him or does he keep spares? Very unprofessional. “Are you off the clock?”

Herein lies the danger of James Bond:

That something warm curls in Q’s gut at the question, and would _really_ like him to answer in the affirmative, regardless of what Bond actually means by it and the lack of any segue whatsoever.

This, of course, is a disaster in waiting.

 

“No,” Q replies, light as he can. “I am very much on the clock until such time as I properly outfit this transmitter. 003’s flight leaves very early in the morning.”

“It’s already very early in the morning,” Bond notes, in another amused rumble.

He looks to Q, shrugs.

Says lightly back, “Pity.”

Q acknowledges that he hasn’t got all the rhythms of MI6 figured out _just_ yet.

 

***

Bond goes on missions, which Q prepares him for as needed. They are both more or less professional: Bond makes quips about Q’s clothes. Q makes quips about Bond’s propensity for destruction. Bond calls the state of his hair a disgrace, and Q thinks, _wanton_.

Bond goes on missions.

Bond is a dot on a screen, and a voice in Q’s ears.

Bond always comes back. He brings Q broken tech, shrapnel and dead mice at his door, and paces the floor while he takes inventory. These times pass tensely, but unpunctuated by anything more than tension.

Q finds this perfectly acceptable. Assuming 007 _does_ go for anyone not a gorgeous mistress to some dictator or other, one undoubtedly amazing night of shagging is not worth spending the rest of his career at MI6 as just somebody else James Bond has slept with. Q’s pride won’t allow him to make himself that unimportant.

(Bond touches his elbow in the armoury to catch his attention, and when Q turns, his fingers graze his forearm. His expression is neutral, as is his dry remark about guns.

Q sees Moneypenny’s eyes flick away.)

He had hoped to cultivate Moneypenny as an ally, but lately she’s been rather hard to get hold of. Lord knows they both have more to do than giggle about their extracurriculars.

 

Nobody pulls him aside. No one accuses.

Q is aware that he is doing exemplary work.

 

***

When Bond goes to Prague, off tracking down a particularly valuable contact, Q is invited to M’s office for an unofficial assessment. Nothing serious, really, more like a sit-down chat. He’s all right with it. Maybe Mummy can give him some budget-stretching pointers in the face of cavalier, resource-wasting secret agents.

In fact, the first three-quarters of the conversation do involve budget-stretching pointers, which quickly devolve into polite haggling.

“I can’t _actually_ make radios and guns and things indestructible without a good deal more funding,” Q observes.

M’s eyebrows arch.

“At this point, I’m not sure whether to believe that.”

“Really,” Q protests. “Very flattering.”

(Worse than Bond.)

They ping-pong back and forth a bit, and eventually M agrees to give him the _slightest_ bit more license to dress down errant agents who destroy their very nice equipment.

Q thinks they’re about finished, but M leans back in his chair and gives him a speculative look.

“By the way,” he says. “How is 007?”

Q blinks.

“Oh—he’s on the ground,” he says. “He’s due to check back in—“

As he glances to his watch, M says, “Right. But how _is_ 007?”

Q looks up.

“Sir?”

The corner of M’s mouth lifts in a slight, dry smile.

“I’m sure you’re aware that in the aftermath of the Silva business, he’s been less than forthcoming with our psych team.”

“Well,” Q begins, but M holds up a hand.

“I’m not asking you to break any confidence.” He sits back. “Frankly, I’m relieved. It could have been some mob wife in Moscow or a Tahitian bartender; you can at least keep an eye on him, keep his head on straight—“

_Oh,_ thinks Q distantly.

This is about to become the most awkward meeting of his life.

“… Sir,” he says carefully.

“MI6,” M assures him, without stopping to look at his face, “does not take a position on intra-agency relations. We’re well aware of the potential benefits.”

“Sir.”

“Given the dangers, the unique—stresses—“

_“Sir.”_ M stops this time. “I’m afraid you’ve … got the wrong impression.”

M straightens, the air of strained indulgence fading.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Well, ah, Moneypenny—“

_“Moneypenny?”_

This is how, when James Bond isn’t even _around_ , Q becomes just another someone who’s slept with James Bond, and has a very awkward and pause-laden and _unnecessarily dubious_ conversation as a result.

 

The upshot is, he manages to wheedle promises of more funding.

 

***

Q is frankly impressed with himself for how professional he is for the remainder of the Prague mission, with Moneypenny and all the rest of them.

A reputation was precisely what he didn’t want. If _M’s_ talking to him about it, God only knows what’s going round among the rest of the organization.

Bond comes back only a little banged up, and prowls into Q-branch like a returning storm.

“Brought you something,” he says, tossing a glinting object onto the table.

It lands with a _tink_. Q bends to retrieve it.

“From our new friend?” he says.

“I’m assured it was worth my while.”

“I hope it’s worth mine.”

The familiar, pressure-laden pause descends between them.

_Bugger this,_ Q thinks.

 

***

Bond is sent to medical. Bond ignores medical. Bond comes back around Q-branch for no good reason.

When he has stood by the table for—by Q’s count—two minutes without interruption, Q remarks, “You’re staring, 007.”

007 appears unperturbed.

“Well,” he says, “I’ve had worse views.”

Q only has so many places to go, so many things to put away in this room. He looks up.

James Bond is, in fact, looking back at him.

“Though that jumper is certainly contending for a bottom slot.”

 

There’s something _preternatural_ about 007’s sense of timing.

Judging moments, whether for jumping off trains or taking shots or coming back from the dead or seducing one’s Quartermaster, he supposes it all comes down to the training.

Bond takes a step towards him, and another, evidently heedless of Q’s disapproving frown at the insult.

He wraps a callused hand around Q’s wrist, surprisingly gentle (though of course, this is a man who dismantles explosives every other week), and bends his head. Q can nearly feel the whisper of Bond’s tie against his chest, and has the sneaking suspicion that a) gravity is reorienting itself in their immediate locality, b) he might be dreaming, and c) maybe he should have reconsidered the wisdom of acquiring a social life after all.

Q clears his throat.

“007.” It does not come out nearly as assured as he would like it to. “Security feed.”

007 pauses thoughtfully.

“Right.” He releases Q’s wrist and steps back, regarding him with what is almost a wariness.

Then he smiles.

(Distantly, Q wonders where he miscalculated, how Bond’s outmaneuvered him without making a move.

_Everyone,_ he despairs. Bond’s file bears it out. _He does it to everyone.)_

“Dinner?”

 

***

He’s been going about this all wrong.

They are sitting in a corner booth at an aggressively trendy restaurant, Bond perfectly appropriate in his suit jacket and Q perfectly not in his jumper, and everything between them is more or less the same.

“You’re overdressed,” Bond murmurs over his scotch.

“Under, you mean.” Q went with a brandy, himself. His lips twist wryly. “Careful, 007, once your mind’s gone there really is nothing left.”

Bond snorts. “The only serviceable future for those clothes is on somebody’s floor.”

… Right. More or less the same. And Q admits he’s being going about this all wrong. It’s principles of action and reaction: Pull back and Bond gives chase, like the finely honed Pavlovian instrument he is. Press close, and this dizzying tension will evaporate like the hormonal bluff that _it_ is.

Sometimes, as the bard says, you’ve got to lose to win.

“Do people really let you get away with lines like that?” he says.

“You’d be surprised what I get away with.” Bond’s mouth quirks up at the corners; Q groans.

The man is a walking cliché. A cliché about sex. Q has got to stop thinking about sex.

He picks up his glass and drinks.

 

***

A few more things Q lets 007 get away with:

Two more glasses of brandy—“I thought three might kill you.” “My liver’s in better shape than yours, 007”—and a ride back to 007’s new flat, which is sleek and modern and doesn’t look as if anyone really lives in it.

007 halts just through the door, and turns as gently as if they were dancing to press Q to the wall. His weight settles against him, hands sliding up his arms.

Fuck, but he’s good.

“007,” Q says, as Bond’s face drifts close to his with what feels like magnetic inevitability.

“Mm,” Bond concurs, nuzzling into his neck. Q’s breath hitches.

Less brandy next time, then—though he already knows there won’t be one.

Bond’s lips slide up his neck, sucking kisses into his skin. He bites his ear, and Q shudders. Forget feeling as if he’s been thrown to a lion.

He’s been thrown to a hurricane.

These slow starts must be something he does with women, beautiful mistresses and scientists and daughters of corrupt men and other countries’ covert operatives. When they kiss, it’s slow, searching. Toe-curlingly sensual. Q thinks of M saying _keep his head on straight--_

There’s a policy for you. Shove him into a field agent’s bed on the off chance he’s the stable one.

Q tilts his head to deepen the kiss, though in a moment he’ll need to get rid of his glasses. He bites Bond’s lip rather harder than he means to; Bond groans and grinds against him, and Q gasps and grinds back.

“Listen,” Q says thickly when they come up for air. “007. I’m not—“

Bond’s stubble rasps against the shell of his ear, his breath hot and his lips impossibly soft in contrast.

“Not having second thoughts, are you?”

They’re both very still a moment, breathing.

One of 007’s hands slides down the length of Q’s arm to his wrist, thumb stroking the inside. Q’s fingers uncurl.

He breathes, “Hundreds of them.”

 

***

There are a few more things he lets Bond get away with: Shirts and trousers unbuttoned and discarded, teeth at his hip. Bond’s voice in his ear, scalding hot: _Good boy, yes like that—_

The next morning’s a Saturday, and he wakes up alone in James Bond’s bed. There is a note on the bedside table; Q fumbles his glasses on to read.

_Damascus._

“How romantic,” he mumbles.

When Q finds his trousers and consequently his phone, there’s an email for him: Come in to work tonight, urgent situation, arms deal in Syria.

Well.

If you want weekends, become an accountant.

 

***

“She’s very pretty,” Moneypenny says, arching an eyebrow at the monitor.

“Yes,” Q agrees. “She’s got a lot of pretty guns she’s very keen on selling to Russian mercenaries.”

Thank God for caffeine and high collars.

“Were you wearing that jumper on Friday?” Moneypenny asks.

Luckily, M and Tanner arrive, and everybody’s got to get on the same page about coordinates and mission objectives.

The arms dealer _is_ very pretty. Big dark eyes, lustrous hair—it shows up very well via satellite feed, at any rate. As her conversation with Bond is relayed to the room, which includes Moneypenny, his boss, and a handful of agents and technicians, Q reflects that he may have understood the hazards of an office affair—but he didn’t exactly comprehend. Until now.

Now he comprehends quite well.

_“And why should I endanger my shipment for you, Mr. Bond?”_

_“You seem like a dangerous woman, Miss Malouf. I’m sure you’ll manage.”_

_“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”_

_“Meaning the Russians, or yourself?”_

He was right. Bond has a formula. It’s not the words, it’s the melody: that intimate pitch, the one that works no matter how many times you’ve heard it deployed. If Bond’s in the game, there’s no such thing as not playing.

The tiny camera hovers on Malouf’s mouth, curved in a smile.

Then abruptly, audio and visual both cut out.

 

“… What’s happening, Q?” M says.

Q frowns at his laptop, _tap-tap-clicks_ into a more detailed readout, and says in resignation, “He’s gone dark.”

Moneypenny rolls her eyes.

“Not again,” Tanner murmurs.

“Well get him back!” M demands.

Q swallows.

Ignoring whether he can—and that depends entirely on what the hell it is that Bond’s just done to _yet another_ piece of state-of-the-art communications equipment—well. He’ll just take a moment to appreciate how spectacularly awkward this is.

“I’m not sure the next few hours are going to be relevant to mission objectives,” he points out faintly.

Moneypenny snorts. “Not likely.”

“We need him back online,” M insists, “it’s a matter of security.”

This Q knows very well. Not to mention that knowing 007, the whole cartel will storm in while he’s in bed with that woman, and he’ll have to shoot them with his pants down.

“I’ll handle it,” Q mutters.

He can still feel 007’s teeth against his skin.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bond and Q continue an awkward secret agent pas de deux. Meanwhile, the espionage business keeps on booming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks Adiva! And thank you everyone who's left comments and these funny-tasting Facebook likes. (I'm, ummm, new around here.) Hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing!

Fieldwork at MI6 is, often as not, a lot of hurry up and wait. 

Most of the 00’s accept this. While there is always intelligence-gathering to be done, there’s a finite budget to do it with, and though many of MI6’s field agents have—in Q’s opinion—a very unbalanced idea of fun, they seem to enjoy taking breaks when they’re earned.

007’s indefatigable about requesting missions. More often than not he gets them, though the gossip is that M’s been doing his best to put him off. Can’t say a word against him in the technical sense; he’s remarkably efficacious. 

Not to boast, but Q-branch isn’t too shabby on that front either.

It’s the inevitable direction of things—why spend countless man-hours embedding a valuable agent in a terrorist cell, putting their life at risk, when you could spend those dollars more safely on tracing your enemy’s paper trail? Communiqués, spending habits, travel plans, you’d be surprised the footprints people leave behind despite their very best efforts. There are, Q will admit if pressed, limitations. But that’s why it’s so exciting: a vista of technological advances, as yet scarcely explored.

Of course, some people will insist on their cloaks and daggers. 

 

Bond killed four people in Damascus, including Malouf when she turned on him. Q decrypted a hard drive and discovered six names.

At the end of the day, they were all equally dead. But that being the case, 007 is momentarily at loose ends. He’s to report back to London, file a report, and await further instructions.

Q had been rather hoping they’d pack him off to Sri Lanka next. He considers tracking down the plane and orchestrating an emergency landing of some kind, but that’s extremely unsafe, and more to the point pathetic. He contents himself with the knowledge that even a completely smooth flight back gives him fifteen hours to _not_ have Bond anywhere in his vicinity. 

***

 

Seventeen hours, thirty-eight minutes, and fifteen seconds later, Q gets a message that Bond’s been debriefed and is on his way down. Six minutes and twenty seconds after that, Bond pushes open the door to Q-branch, and the tea in Q’s hands doesn’t feel like quite enough.

Bond has no obvious injuries, but there’s something distant in the lines of his face, a craggy stolidity. Q remembers the curve of Malouf’s smile.

A bit morbid to be jealous of a dead woman, isn’t it? Though ‘jealous’ is not exactly the term.

‘Kicking himself’ is more like it.

Bond sets down his gun, then a _very small_ percentage of the ammunition he originally departed with. Last, he plucks out a twisted, scarcely recognizable bit of metal and wire and deposits it beside them.

At that point, Q really cannot contain himself.

“Did you _have_ to?”  he says, putting down his tea and stepping closer to the mangled electronic corpse. “Was that absolutely necessary?”

Bond glances to him with the ghost of a smile.

“Had to convince her I could be trusted.”

Q’s lips purse. He’s not actually sure what his face looks like right now.

“A touch melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“It got the job done.”

Q plucks up the little comm device, turning it over with his fingers. No liquid damage that he can see, no scratches or incisions—basic grab-and-smash job, it looks like. He designs these pieces to withstand pressure and jostling, but he knows from testing that you _can_ crush them in your hand, if you’re really dedicated.

This would be him, not thinking about James Bond’s hands.

“In the future,” he says, in what he considers a very normal tone of voice, “I would consider creating decoys, should you feel the need to prove your trustworthiness again. Less waste of time and money.”

He glances to Bond. 

Bond is leaning against the table, regarding Q with something that might be irritation and might be wariness and might just be exhaustion—jetlag, after all, is kind to no one. But all the same, it triggers a number of sense memories that Q would rather not be experiencing at this time.

Even jetlagged, 007 is unfairly good-looking.

Bond says with only slight sarcasm, “That would be very kind.”

“I’ll consider it, then,” says Q.

He sets down the broken camera.

“Thank you, 007.”

And that’s that.

***

 

Well, not _exactly_.

After Damascus, the remaining Russians go to ground. Q is loathe to admit it, but they do a pretty thorough job of it; he has the nagging sensation of a solution that hasn’t yet coalesced, and in the interim it’s not as if there aren’t constantly other things demanding his attention. Other agents have missions, some of them 00’s. There is always chatter at just about every corner of the globe.

So other things demand his attention, for a time—two weeks’ worth of attention, in Q’s case. He expects they demand Bond’s as well.

After an initial all-nighter at MI6, he returns to his flat each evening. M encourages regular, civilian rest, or at least discourages burnout, so back Q goes by ten or eleven. Takeaway or microwave dinner, typically, or else something simple out of a box; he thinks the mechanics of cooking would be easy enough to learn, but as it’s not an economic necessity, he finds it difficult to scrounge the motivation. He’ll listen to a little music, perhaps, catch an episode of something, check his non-Q correspondence such as it is. In bed by midnight or one, up at six. Successful lives require discipline.

More than anything else, it’s sleep that’s the trouble. This is when the memory of liquor-tasting kisses will come back to him, of Bond’s breath at the shell of his ear and the messy, delicious friction when he slid into Bond’s lap and—

  

It’s rather easy to get carried away, down that line of thought.

Q considers going out to a bar or a club and spending one of his precious evenings finding someone appealing, or drinking until someone unappealing becomes palatable. But this turns into a logic puzzle as he turns it over. All other things being equal, in the realm of hypotheticals and platonic ideals, he’d take sex over sleep any day. However, they are not all equal: Sleep is just a matter of tumbling into bed, while sex is a multivariable, labor-intensive process of commuting and seeking out the right person and chatting them up and drinking and paying for drinks just to scratch an itch he _can_ scratch himself— 

(Not successfully.)

 

He can’t help what he may or may not dream. But when he’s awake and touching himself, he tries not to think of James Bond.

He doesn’t like to give the Bond in his head the satisfaction.

***

 

Q’s first hint that all between him and Bond may not be as resolved as anticipated comes when he’s on break.

Nobody’s brain works optimally at all hours of the day, not even his. Q finds he’s at his best when he has one or two middling-length breaks in a day, twenty minutes or so. Silence is all right, when he can get it, naps rarely advisable, music if there aren’t any words. Today he’s got his headphones in.

He is probably lost in thought, because he blinks and there’s Bond, obligatorily suave in a very well fitting jacket.

Bond gestures. Not rude or anything, more _hello?_

… Q removes his headphones.

“Did you hear me?” Bond asks. His eyes are a sharp blue, mouth amused at the corners.

“Not at all,” Q admits. He taps an ear pad. “Noise-canceling.”

Bond glances dubiously at the headphones. “I said what _are_ those?”

Q blinks.

“… Headphones?”

Bond snorts, leaning one hip against the table. “A little big for the job, aren’t they? The way you make them they’re practically invisible.”

Q runs a finger over one of the (circumaural, admittedly puffy) ear pads—they’re bigger than they need to be, yes, but they’re good for shutting out distractions and he didn’t design them himself and anyway it’s not the point.

“I’m all for form following function, 007,” he says, “but in this case, their size is a matter of aesthetics.”

This time Bond looks almost surprised when he laughs, in one of those near-silent huffs. Q reflects that there are some things you really cannot say to someone you’ve slept with, particularly when that someone trades innuendos like oxygen for CO2.

“Not to be rude,” he continues, a touch clipped, “but unless there’s something you need, 007—“

“Are you all right?”

Q stops.

It’s the tone that does it, he thinks: a rough, quiet register. He flicks a glance to Bond’s face, and finds his expression both brighter and sharper than it was a moment ago. 

“Yes,” Q says slowly. “Yes, I am all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

Bond doesn’t move a muscle except for his eyebrows, which arch in a gentlemanly disbelief. His lips are giving that little quirk again, the one that doesn’t quite mean amusement. Q is not watching his lips.

“You’re an awful liar, Q,” he says, low.

Q falters a moment, at that.

“—Yes, well.” He swallows and attempts to regain his stride. “I’m afraid I’ve never had the training to become a better one.”

Bond turns slightly, hips angled towards him and one hand braced on the table.

Then he shifts his weight, still wearing that strange not-quite-a-smile, and lifts his hand to trace his thumb along Q’s lower lip.

Q’s lips feel dry—his whole mouth feels dry—but the gesture loosens something that’s been coiling in the pit of his stomach for weeks. He exhales softly; Bond’s fingers uncurl to brush his cheek, feather-light. (Somehow, this is worse than even Q’s most undignified fantasy.) 

Bond leans closer, past kissing distance. His lips press to his ear.

“Perhaps,” hot, and claustrophobically close but _ask_ him if he minds, “we could arrange for another round.”

… There are a lot of things Q is supposed to say now. 

_No,_ for a start, or _I don’t think that would be._ Images from screens flicker through his mind: Malouf’s hair, her _Mr. Bond_. There are more women where she came from, for all he knows more men too. Not that it matters, or that he cares, because he doesn’t except in a health-and-safety sense.

(A small, avaricious part of his brain whispers, _Are you **really** going to let him now?)_

What he finds himself actually saying, with Bond’s fingers on his cheek and his hand cupping his jaw, is a soft, precise:

“Perhaps.” 

Bond’s lips curve against Q’s ear.

“If I can spare the time.”

“Mm.” The sound vibrates against his skin, warm. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to put you out.”

This is empirically a _dreadful_ decision.

“In that case.” Light, barely a tremble to it; Q is distantly pleased. “May I remind you that although I’ve currently taken a bit of a break, work spaces are primarily for work and not for play?”

Bond stills. He lifts his hand away and leans back, pushing off from the table.

“Naturally,” he says. His lips quirk into a smile. “Professional as ever, Q.”

“That makes one of us, 007.” 

Bond smiles down at Q a moment, and what he sees, honestly, Q couldn’t begin to guess. His nerves are thrilling with the adrenaline of proximity and poor judgment. 

Bond leaves him alone with his headphones, and only five minutes left of his break.

***

 

Q finds it rather too easy to acquiesce to Bond’s, “Drive you home?”

It’s similarly easy to climb into his car, after both of them glance around to ensure that no one is looking.

“I presume this is strictly need-to-know,” Q says, amused, as the buildings roll by.

“Entirely.” 007’s eyes are on the road.

 

It’s Bond’s flat, of course, not Q’s. Bond holds open the door, and Q arches his eyebrows up at him.

“I hope you didn’t have anywhere to be,” Bond says.

Q’s lips quirk. “Just work, bright and early tomorrow.”

He’s about to ask if there’s anyplace he can set down his things, when Bond takes his face in both hands and kisses the breath out of him.

Q’s glasses end up knocked askance, and he drops his bag and presses against 007 and clutches at his back.

After that, things get a little out of hand.

“Couch,” Bond rumbles, somewhere between a suggestion and an order. They both shed shoes as they go, Bond tugging at the buttons of Q’s jacket as if they’ve done him a personal injury. Knowing their aesthetic differences, perhaps they have.

“Oh,” Q gasps ticklishly, when Bond licks a stripe up the side of his neck.

“Like that?” Bond’s hands are sliding up his sides beneath his open jacket, rumpling his shirt.

Q ducks his head to suck a kiss just below the hinge of Bond’s jaw. He punctuates with a nibble that digs in, and is gratified to hear a faint groan. “Immensely.”

“Good.” Bond turns his head for a proper kiss, taking hold of Q’s lapels and tugging the jacket off his shoulders. “Sit.”

By the time Q drops onto the couch, his jacket is off and his shirt’s half undone and all untucked, and his heartbeat is coming a good deal faster. 007 stands in front of him, backlit slightly by the lights from outside. Q feels as if he’s in the middle of somebody else’s fight.

_Head on straight, keep his head on straight—_

Bond reaches down to take his jaw in one hand and kiss him, slow and deep and with his tongue dipping into Q’s mouth. Q’s tongue thrusts back; Bond makes another low noise that goes straight to his groin.

Q grabs his tie and drags him closer.

 _“Mm.”_ Bond laughs against his mouth, catching himself on the cushion just above Q’s shoulder. “Cheeky whelp. I’ll tie your hands."

“Try it,” Q breathes between kisses, without loosening his grip, “and say goodbye—to your credit history.”

He has to hand it to him: for a man prevented from his full range of motion, Bond doesn’t let is slow him down. He nips at Q’s lips, then ducks his head slightly to kiss his jaw, while his free hand slips down to palm Q through his trousers. Q, already half-hard, feels himself stiffen under the attention.

“Oh,” he murmurs.

“Now,” Bond says, “if you let me go—we might see what we can do about this.”

His fingers move, stroking him through the fabric. Q’s hips push against his hands, only half intentional; Bond rewards him with another rub.

Q’s fingers twist into his tie.

“Q,” Bond says, patiently.

His hand stills.

“007,” Q breathes.

In the velvety dark, Q feels rather than sees the smile.

“When you call me that tomorrow,” Bond murmurs, “I’m going to imagine you just like this.”

Q can’t quite hear for the blood pounding in his ears.

Slowly, his fingers go slack, and Bond’s find the top button of his trousers.

“Sit back,” he says into Q’s ear, as he slips a hand under his waistband; Q’s breath hitches at the touch. “Hips right here.”

Then he’s opening his shirt and kissing down his chest, and slowly easing Q’s legs apart to kneel between them. His hands smooth up his thighs and start to pull his trousers down.

(It flickers through Q’s mind, haphazard and distant and wry, that if you never had a strong father figure, you may as well fuck one who’s abysmal.)

He exhales sharp relief when his cock comes free, shimmying a little to help Bond dislodge his clothes—though after a moment of that, Bond’s hands splay over his thigh and hip, holding him in place. Q laughs on a breath out.

“None of that,” 007 murmurs, dry.

His thumb strokes the inside of Q’s thigh, his head bending to press a kiss there, and Q keeps from squirming with some effort. The kiss lingers, turns sucking, and concludes in a bite—and Q swallows a noise that he suspects would otherwise be a yelp.

When Bond’s lips slide over the head of his cock, wet and warm and tight, Q can’t swallow his moan, or stop the slight jerk of his hips.

It seems to gratify Bond. He takes him in deeper, one hand still pressed to his hip to keep him still. The other curls over the base of his cock, making up the difference his mouth can’t cover. Q gasps as Bond’s hand and his mouth move in tandem, painfully slow at first. 

Perhaps he’s meant to beg. He doesn’t think he will.

Unless given proper incentive.

Though Bond’s doing a bloody good job of that. His tongue curls, swiping the underside of Q’s cock and sending a jolt of pleasure through him; at Q’s moan, he glances up. The shadows in here make it difficult to see the details, but Q can make out the sharp line of Bond’s cheekbones, and an unmistakable gleam in his eyes.

God he’s gorgeous.

Eyes locked on Q’s, he does something truly unfair with his tongue, and Q gasps again. “Oh, _fuck_ you—“

Bond’s head bobs faster, lips sliding up and down his cock; Q lets his head fall against the cushion with a groan. His hips are half-trying to move but Bond’s hand keeps pressing down, holding him in place. His heart is pounding, breath coming out in short gasps. Bond alters his rhythm with suspicious aplomb, his lips and his hand wet and sloppy and _bloody_ perfect.

“Mm—yes all right,” as Bond’s mouth and hand move faster, tighter and messier and better, so much better, “God—“

Names flicker through his mind, on the tip of his tongue:

_007, Bond, James, yes please James—_

In the moment, he can’t think which one is right.

 

It might be an hour or only a few seconds later, but either way, Q comes gasping and shuddering and Bond pulls back just in time.

When Q can move again, his shirt is spattered with come, and Bond is still crouched between his thighs, wearing a small but very satisfied smirk.

“Good for you?” he inquires.

Q snorts shakily. “Christ.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“007, you are absolutely deplorable.”

Q leans forward, hooking his hand around the back of his neck.

“Come up here, please. I find myself compelled to repay the favor.”

***

 

Q is on his second mug of tea and still feels groggy. This time, however, it feels eminently worth it.

His workload today isn’t too tedious: On top of everything else, he has a few security systems to hack into, one of them MI6’s and the other belonging to a corporation contracting with the British government. It’s in the national interest that their business secrets remain, well, secret.

He’s a little surprised when Moneypenny strides in.

“M wants you,” she says. “Upstairs, now.”

Q blinks, and opens his mouth to ask—

“I don’t know what it’s about,” she cuts him off before he can. A shake of her head. “Better to hurry.”

Their destination is a conference room on the same floor as M’s office. 007 is already there when they arrive. He doesn’t make eye contact with either of them.

A few more agents trickle in, some field and some not, and Tanner closes the door behind them.

“I’ve just learned,” M says after a brief ‘good morning’ preamble, “that an MI6 contact in Denmark’s been murdered.”

“Who?” asks Moneypenny.

“Rachid Hassani.” M’s lips press together. “We’ve got an agent on the ground to look into it, but there is one thing so far. Note left with the body. Tanner?"

Tanner flips open a laptop, turning it to face the group. There’s a single image, blown up to fill the screen: a piece of paper, flecked with spots reddish-brown and scrawled with two lines of ink. One looks like Arabic to Q, but the other he can read perfectly well:

**AMIRA.**

“Shit,” Moneypenny breathes.

Bond folds his arms over his chest, frowning at the screen.

“Amira?”

Moneypenny stares at him, then narrows her eyes as if weighing the benefits of murder. Q knows he recognizes that name from somewhere.

“Amira, 007,” she says, tone striking somewhere near ‘venomous.’ “As in Syrian. Amira Malouf.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got so very strange on me. XD I would be interested to know what people think, though I always am! Thanks forever to Adiva and to Amy for her Britpicking.

Here is what they know about Amira Malouf:

She was born in Aleppo in 1980, making her 32 at the time of her death. Attended public school, dropped out of the University of Damascus. She resurfaced several years later in Lebanon, presumably already ensconced in the arms trade she would pursue until the end of her brief life. She traveled internationally a great deal after that, within the Middle East and to Russia mostly. 

Malouf overlapped with a number of extralegal organizations—mercenaries, when you come down to it—and political groups at least suspected of terrorism. No Baath party ties to speak of, though her taste in friends ran to the pan-Arab.

Q supposes he has a certain sympathy for freedom fighters, people trying to create their own stable political identities. However, he’s a great deal less indulgent on the subject of terrorism.

What he can’t figure out at the moment is who could have killed Hassani. Amend that: who could have and _would_ have. Of Malouf’s known associates, of which there are many, only half a dozen have itineraries that allow for recent homicides in Denmark. This doesn’t account for known associates whose itineraries have proved troublesome to pin down, or for associates who are not, at this time, linked to Malouf in the MI6 database. 

Q is hardly doing all this alone. He can’t help trying to put pieces together, but the only analysis in his job description is methodological. Moneypenny and M request the information, with input from Tanner; Q hunts it up and compiles it, or delegates the hunting and compiling to someone else, and makes it prettier and smarter—adding layers of complexity that tailor it to their task. The project as it exists on his desktop is simply named DAMASCUS. 

007 wants to go to Copenhagen. He has been officially told that he cannot do this, which makes Q rather suspect he’ll be stopping by to knock him out and take a gun any moment now. 

M seems to share his opinion.

“If Bond puts in a request for equipment,” he says, “see he doesn’t get it?” 

Q glances up from a microchip. 

“Out of curiosity, how will I stop him?”

 M’s lips twitch.

“Just … let me know if he comes by. Text, please: I’m about to head into a meeting with the delegation from Syria.” He rubs the bridge of his nose. “I fully expect the ambassador to throw me under the bus.”

And with that, there’s really nothing for it but to get to work.

Q will say this much for 007: If you timed the moment at which M left the room on a stopwatch, counted the steps to his office, allowed for a brief email check, waited for him to climb into the sleek black car for public-facing MI6 business, and paused to give him time to make it, say, over the bridge and past the first few lights, you would then have calculated the _precise_ moment at which James Bond opens the door.

It’s impressive.

“Q,” he says with a nod.

Q does not smile. But it’s a near sort of thing.

“M’s warned me not to give you anything,” he notes.

Bond cocks an eyebrow, shutting the door behind him.

“Was that personally or politically?”

For a moment, Q contemplates playing that one straight, so to speak: _Oh, he’s fine with personal. Nigh on giddy._ Hesettles for rolling his eyes. Meanwhile Bond is moving with purpose—not quickly-with-purpose, it’s more of a circling. Taking a measure of Q’s weak points.

Several of which he already knows.

“It’s not going to do you any good,” Q warns, mildly. He turns his attention to his laptop, where he is running a new and improved cross-referencing algorithm on the DAMASCUS data; he keeps half an eye on Bond from beneath his glasses. “M’s instructed me to contact him immediately if you try to take anything. I’ve passed word along to the rest of Q-branch, so you won’t have any luck in the Armoury either.”

“How thorough of you.”

“Mm,” Q agrees, as noncommittally as possible. “I try.” 

There’s a pause, which suits Q perfectly. 

All things considered, once is an accident and twice is coincidence but three times is too bloody many; they could use a little _less_ locking of gazes and personal space invasion around here, it only leads to— 

_Cheeky whelp, I’ll tie your hands._

… Complications.

As if in an effort to prove that he exists to thwart all of Q’s best-laid plans, Bond says in a light tone, slightly too measured to be really casual: 

“Who says I’ve come for a gun?”

Q looks up.

Bond is smirking at him faintly, the lines crinkling at the corners of his mouth. Q would _like_ to say that the absolutely transparent line has no effect on him whatsoever—but regrettably, he does find himself slightly moved.

Very slightly.

“Stopped by to chat, then?” he asks dryly. 

“Something like that.”

Q turns to face Bond as he approaches, trying to broadcast inaccessibility with his eyebrows. Bond stops just a hair inside polite conversational distance. 

“You may have noticed,” Q says, “that I’m at work. As are you.”

“Well,” Bond muses. “At the moment, I’m extremely occupied _not_ taking a flight to Copenhagen.”

Bond’s hand slides along the table, coming to rest a few inches from Q’s hip. (Bond is getting to a less and less polite distance by the moment.) Q says, mildly, “We’re very busy here today, 007.” 

Bond’s smile widens, goes a bit secretive, and Q thinks _when you call me that tomorrow_ with a pulse of what’s not quite shame and not quite desire. Nostalgic eroticism, maybe.

Bond’s thumb finds the curve of Q’s hip through his trousers.

“Bond,” Q warns. It comes out a murmur.

007 takes a last step in before Q can move, taking his wrist with his free hand and blocking his path away from the table. None of it’s violent; it’s simply plotted, like a dance Q doesn’t know or a chess game he’s just lost. 

“Just like I remember,” he says, thumb stroking Q’s hipbone and his fingers curling around. “Skinny as a whip.”

“If you were going for charm,” Q informs him steadily, “I’m not sure that’s your best work.”

“Mm.” Bond’s hand slides up to his waist, the other stroking idly over the inside of Q’s wrist— soft, drifting between the heel of his hand and his forearm and tracing the vein. “Slip of a thing, aren’t you. I can fit my hands around you.”

He can’t, but Q would bet he’d come embarrassingly close if he tried it. 

“My physique is not a suitable topic of conversation,” he protests, trying not to react to _either_ of James’ hands because he’s already more or less resigned to the inevitability of replacing current security footage with a loop of him typing, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be responsible for escalating the situation. “I haven’t said anything about your ears.”

Bond pauses.

“My ears.”

“Well—they’re—“ Q’s gaze flicks to his face, and they are terribly close after all aren’t they. He wets his lip with his tongue. 

For a moment, the blue of James’ eyes seems to brighten.

He turns his head and leans in close to run his tongue along the edge of Q’s earlobe. In the wake of his tongue, his teeth scrape down. Q makes an involuntary noise at the back of his throat.

“My _ears_ ,” Bond rumbles, disdainful.

Then his tongue flicks out again, and his hand lets go of Q’s wrist so the logical thing to do seems to be to grab for his shoulder and dig in with his fingers. Bond’s arm slides around Q’s waist, his body pressing forward; Q, as a result, is pressed _back_ until his hips hit the table. 

“I _really_ shouldn’t,” he complains, tilting his head to give Bond better access to his throat.

“All work and no play,” Bond replies against his neck, “makes for a dull Quartermaster.” 

Then there’s a brief, ridiculous, blissful period in which James Bond is kissing his neck and his ear, an occurrence which is rapidly becoming Q’s favorite part of their professional acquaintance. Q’s hand slips under Bond’s jacket to grip the muscle at his back; one of Bond’s hands keeps hold of Q’s hip, and the other—

 

Come to think of it, what is Bond’s other hand doing?

This is around when Q begins to hear the quiet clacking of a keyboard.

Breathlessly, he says, “… Bond?”

“Hmm?" 

“What are you doing?” 

The noise abruptly stops. Bond sucks just below the hinge of Q’s jaw, not quite enough to mark. 

“I’d think it’s obvious,” he murmurs, but Q is already twisting to get a glimpse of his laptop screen. The computer has, in fact, been woken from sleep mode, and the screen is requesting a password. 

“It’s _locked_ ,” he protests, blinking. “You won’t be able to see anything without the—007, did you come here to spy on me?” 

“Well, I came for a gun.” Bond does not have the good grace to look even slightly ashamed at having been caught out. In fact, he’s smiling a little. “But Q-branch can prove somewhat distracting.”

“I’m not giving you access to the Damascus information,” Q says, trying desperately to get his heartbeat back under control. “It’s not relevant, you’re not on a mission.” 

“Just the gun, then.” Bond slips his hand down to Q’s thigh, and presses another kiss just above the collar of his shirt. “Please. It’s important.”

Q counts to five in his head, doing his level best to take deep, normal breaths.

“There’s _one_ you can have,” he murmurs. “Prototype. I’m very attached to it.”

Bond’s smile quirks sharply against his neck. He steps back.

“I’ll do my best to bring it back in one piece.”

“Please do, this time.”

  

When Bond leaves, gun tucked into his jacket, Q gives himself a minute to compose himself. A glance to his inbox shows he has a number of queries coming up from other members of Q-branch, and he really ought to see about some sort of cold shower equivalent before he deals with them. He could stand to eat some lunch as well …

Q types out a few answers that he knows offhand, hits send. Then, after a moment’s thought, he turns to a small remote by his laptop and presses its top button.

He opens a new window on his laptop, which illuminates the big monitor across the room. It’s a map, bright electric veins of roads against black.

The map shows a small red dot moving towards Heathrow.

Q watches it blip, quirking a faint smile. Then he pulls out his phone to text M.

 

***

Listen, hierarchy and procedure are all well and good, but this one is about realism: If Bond wants a gun to take to Copenhagen, Bond will get a gun to take to Copenhagen—with Q-branch’s blessing or not. At least this way they can keep tabs.

M is not precisely thrilled to learn that Q let Bond get out with a weapon after all, but the fact that it has a tracking device in it mollifies him somewhat. Q is instructed to make contact at his discretion, and monitor the situation as necessary. 

It’s 4:36 by London time when he dials Bond’s hotel room.

“Yes?” says the unpromising voice on the other end.

“007,” Q greets him, in a pleasant, professional tone. “Enjoying the D'Angleterre? You should try to make it out to the Louisiana while you’re here, they’ve added some really incredible sculptures.”

(Tanner is grinning a little. Q tries very hard not to.) 

“… Q.” Bond does not sound surprised. “And I made a point this time of paying cash.” 

“Very lo-fi,” Q replies. “Admirably, really, with international airfare these days. But in this case I took precautions.” He gives it half a beat before he can’t help adding, “Gun treating you well?”

There is a dangerous pause from Copenhagen.

“I haven’t had occasion to find out.” 

“That’s lucky, I suppose—“

Flat: “What did you give me, Q?” 

Q is only slightly put off by his tone. 

“A personal statement,” he says. “I wouldn’t try taking it apart to find the tracking device, if I were you. If you’re looking into Hassani’s death, you can’t afford to lose the time." 

If Q were alone in the room—and not, say, in here with Tanner and three of his immediate subordinates, not that he expects they’d enjoy being referred to as such—he might take a moment to indulge in some manner of gloating. Something like _did you really think you could seduce state secrets out of me_ , or _thinking with the downstairs brain, were we 007?_

Bond murmurs over the line, low, “Clever.”

And Q sputters slightly, which he turns into a cough.

“You’re on speaker, by the way,” he says. “Say hello to Tanner.”

“… Hello, Tanner.”

Tanner blinks. “Ah—hello, 007. M’s not too pleased with you, you know.”

“Mummy’s disapproval.” Bond’s voice is dry. “Nothing worse.” He sighs, brisk. “All right—I assume you boys will be in my head for the duration.”

“Yes and no,” Q hedges. “I’ll be dialing your cell. Please _do_ take my calls this time, 007.”

“It’s a date,” Bond replies, deadpan.

He hangs up.

 

***

A little later, Q calls Bond’s cell and is slightly surprised when he actually does get an answer.

“I’m at Hassani’s,” Bond says, low. “What can you tell me?”

“Only that the local police identified foul play but dismissed all their suspects.” It’s just Q and Tanner and another Q-branch engineer, by now; the rest have gone home. He thinks her name’s Gita. “Place was a mess, unclear whether there was a robbery.” 

“It’s that or poor housekeeping,” Bond notes.

Q tries to hear into the silence past him. He should have thought of some way to get a microphone sewn into the lining of his suit or something, but he reflects that 007 would probably kill him.

He has the suspicion that he should do a little more reflecting about 007 in general, but for the moment he allows work to trump. 

“What do you see?”

Terse, “Crime scene.” A pause, and Bond adds, “What about the witnesses?”

“Same story all around,” Q sighs, pulling up the police report. “They heard a scuffle, heard a shot, and by the time they got the door down our killer was gone.”

Bond doesn’t reply. 

“Bond?” 

_“Shh,”_ he breathes sharply, and adds after a moment, “I hear something.” 

This is why Q really much prefers monitoring places with some kind of video capability—shopping malls, tube stations, hotels, give him anything but a voice going silent over the phone.

He can hear 007 breathing, quiet and perfectly even.

Sometimes he forgets that his own senses have limits. In this moment, however, a footstep goes _crunch_ , and Bond takes a sharp breath in and that’s _it_ , and it’s all rather unignorably frustrating.

“Bond?” Q says. “What’s going on?”

Silence and breathing.

There’s a solid sound like a thump. In the background, a different voice is grunting in pain.

_“Bond.”_

Then there’s a crash, and Bond huffs, “Have to call you back.”

A _whip-crack_ sound, startlingly loud, makes them all wince.

The connection cuts out.

 

“Oh, shit,” Q hisses.

He checks on the gun, which is still in one piece—but that of course gives little insight into 007’s status, except that his gun is in one piece.

“Can we get him some other way?” Gita asks sharply.

“He isn’t hooked up to anything,” Q groans, scrubbing a hand over his face. “All right, um, I’m going to try some things, will somebody get M?” 

“Trying him already,” Tanner says, bent over his phone. “He’s at a dinner.” 

“With the Syrians?” Q’s fingers clatter over the keyboard. “This is _slightly_ more pressing.”

“Texting,” Tanner answers. 

Q’s not sure whether to be more irritated at Bond, for gallivanting off unnecessarily to another country and getting himself attacked at a crime scene, or at himself, for being so cavalier about the whole thing and then losing Bond when he was supposed to be monitoring him.

Suffice it to say, Q does not feel _nearly_ so clever right now as he did this morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Adiva and Amy, yet again as ever. Sorry there's no sex this chapter! Also, I hope the switch to Bond POV is not too jarring; I was just so curious to get into his headspace, I couldn't resist.

If James Bond is blessed in one thing, it’s this:

Some sod or other always blunders in trying to kill him too early and tips their whole damn hand.

This sod he killed first. (It’s typically the way.) His cell phone is smashed and useless at the end of it; in exchange, however, he recovers a wallet off the dead man. Jordanian, if the ID is to be believed.

They so seldom are.

He limps back to his hotel room and phones Mallory.

“Bond.”

“Ah.” Mallory sounds brisk, and dryly amused. “Q thought you might be back.”

In the dark of his room, Bond quirks an unamused smile. “Might?”

“Well, the tracking on your gun is fully functional, so we had a position. But in the absence of communication, Q thought it was possible that you’d been killed, the gun had been stolen, and your killer got your room key off your corpse.”

“Nasty imagination that boy has.”

Bond can almost hear the ensuing raised eyebrows.

“I don’t suppose I could bore you by inquiring as to your status, 007?”

“Man tried to kill me,” Bond replies. “He’s dead.”

“Anything slightly more specific?”

“Our conversation wasn’t exactly thorough,” Bond muses. “But I have his wallet. Jordanian identification and credit card, no passport.”

“Hm.” Mallory pauses a moment. “Well, bring it back, we’ll see what we can do. I need you on the next plane to London.”

Bond glances to the window, which affords a decent view of a bustling square, baubles of light strung between the buildings.

“I do seem to have exhausted my opportunities for entertainment,” he notes. “Though I’ve heard tempting things about the Louisiana …”

“There’s a dinner tomorrow night for the Syrian delegation,” Mallory says, evidently ignoring him. “Eve’s coming. In light of your recent brush with assassination, I’d like you there as well.”

“Sounds dull,” says Bond.

“With any luck. Black tie, briefing at six sharp. Don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Quite.” Mallory sounds dry, but not acerbic. Bond feels a slight pang. “And 007?”

James waits out the pause.

“We’ll see what turns up with your Jordanian. Unless and until something does, I’m seriously considering having Q put a freeze on your credit cards.”

Bond smiles, slight and sharp in the darkness.

“Tell me how that works out.”

***

 

Bond doesn’t sleep on the flight out of Copenhagen, not even with the help of in-flight scotch. (Terrible even as these things go, but one can’t have everything.) Still, somewhere around 33,000 feet, he feels a sensation of sinking, slowly, through deep water.

When he arrives at MI6, two-button suit pressed and crisp, Eve is there wearing a proper-necked, fitted cocktail dress of a ministry-job peach. Mallory looks dapper and uncomfortable in a suit of his own.

Assassins aside, there’s nothing particularly risky about this venture. The general feeling is that the Syrians are keeping something back—if not about Damascus, then certainly about their intentions towards their neighbors. Anything they learn tonight could be useful currency with the CIA.

Tanner and Q are observing for the evening. They’d planned to shuffle this one off to some of the lower-downs, but the recent attempt on James’ life means they’re back on.

“We’ll be looking into our would-be killer while you’re out,” Tanner says. “We should have something definite for you before dessert.”

“I hope what you find doesn’t spoil my appetite,” Moneypenny teases.

Q glances up from his typing, lips quirking absently.

“If there isn’t a major international incident,” he says, “one of you bring us back some champagne, will you?”

Moneypenny laughs and throws a serious salute.

Before he reaches the door, Bond glances back to Q. By some accident of timing, Q looks up at the same moment.

Their eyes meet.

Q frowns, as if trying to place him, or as if James is a problem he thought he’d already solved—some previously-eradicated virus or mucked up firewall setting. (Eve has complained that since Q’s ignominious defeat at Silva’s hands, the MI6 firewall has become _so_ impenetrable that even legitimate actions sometimes don’t go through: hitting searches, sending emails, tapping certain entries in the database. When Bond heard, he made a remark about penetration.)

Whatever the look is, it doesn’t last long. Something on a screen catches Q’s attention, and his gaze darts to follow.

Bond leaves.

***

 

(The line is fine between fantasy and a to-do list, something to get to if one has time and inclination. Bond hasn’t entirely decided which this is.

‘Harmless entertainment,’ perhaps:

Q pressed to the wall of his shower, wet and gasping. Glasses: gone.

Q, sprawled under him (or straddling his waist, depending on Bond’s mood), his fingers tracing scars and ridges of muscle with the adroitness of a cartographer. His teeth sink into James’ shoulder, bite his lower lip, and his mouth tastes of brandy and toothpaste.

Q under the desk he rarely uses, hands nimble to undo James’ belt. His breath is warm on his cock, tongue deft and irritatingly sure, and his lips—

(This one has happened already. The sucking off, not the desk.

James wouldn’t mind recreating the scene with a few embellishments. Not that he plans to, strictly.

He rarely plans these things.)

 

Q’s hips pushing against his as he thrusts, his mouth falling open and eyes pressing shut.

 _“Tell me your name,”_ James says, and says it again as he thrusts into him, over Q’s gasps and groans and gorgeous, unidentifiable sounds. _“Your name, what’s your name—“_

In his head, Q arches his back and makes any number of ever-shifting gratifying noises; but his lips stutter into a smirk every time.

 _“I’m afraid,”_ he breathes, and James could _slap_ him, _“it’s classified.”_

 

_Oh for God’s sake._

The voice in his head is not his own.

A little too womanish, for one thing.

 _Just buy yourself a bloody new car. You can afford it._ )

***

 

The hall is lit dimly, but warmly: a subdued sort of elegance for a rainy London evening. The décor is likewise politely opulent: creamy walls and creamy tablecloths and staid, deep-red carpet. A string quartet is playing.

It’s slightly more than Bond would have expected for this occasion, and it’s tempting to read it as a sign that things are going poorly with the Syrian delegation.

Though this may be because Mallory has said as much.

Bond doesn’t walk in with Eve and Mallory. He’s still undercover tonight: The cover in question just happens to be Commander James Bond, Ministry of Defense.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Eve says, arching her eyebrows over a glass of wine.

Bond smiles faintly.

“What a pleasant surprise, Miss—“

“Moneypenny.” Eve pouts, all false wounded pride. “Forgotten me already, Commander?”

“Miss Moneypenny.” Bond quirks her a grin. “Forgive me. It’s been murder in the office this week.”

They are both scanning the room, which by now is full of serious men in dark suits and serious women in skirt suits and proper dresses. Bond catches sight of the British ambassador—Lymond, if memory serves. He’s in conversation with a group of Syrians, and though he laughs at something one of them’s said, by the look of it he’s under some strain.

“Where’s your escort?” Bond murmurs.

Eve smiles. “Occupied.”

Bond accepts the glass proffered by an unobtrusive waiter and sips.

Not bad.

Moneypenny nods to the door, only just perceptible. “And now they’re all here.”

Bond follows her gaze, in time to see the woman walking in.

She’s of average height and slender build, the soft drape of her black dress hugging her curves and hiding them: high neck, long sleeves, floor-skimming hem. Her eyes are large and dark, her hair pinned up, and from this distance Bond would put her at late forties, early fifties at the latest. No makeup.

“Lena Fakhri, I presume,” Bond says, low.

“Mm. That’s her,” Eve confirms. “The _charge d’affaires_ herself.”

Bond knocks back the contents of his glass.

“I think I’ll say hello.”

As he departs, he sees Moneypenny roll her eyes.

“Good evening,” he says easily.

Lena Fakhri is alone; no retinue. She arches her eyebrows up at him, unimpressed as a default.

When she smiles, it is the practiced, friendly, depthless smile of a career diplomat.

“Good evening,” she says. Her accent is pronounced, but not heavy. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Bond,” he answers. “James Bond. Ministry of Defense.”

They shake hands.

“Care to dance?” he asks her.

Lena Fakhri glances around the room, incredulous. “Nobody here is dancing, Mr. Bond.”

Bond follows her gaze. Then he smiles: a slight, calculated twist of his lips.

“I thought we might set a new trend.”

“A dangerous proposition.”

“Oh, I hope not,” Bond replies. “Unless you have two left feet.”

He holds out his hand.

For a moment, Fakhri’s expression is difficult to read. It’s not overtly aggressive or disdainful, but some strain enters into it, muddying the political facade.

Bond is not unused to that sort of look, from a woman.

But she takes his hand smoothly. Casting a faintly indulgent smile around the room—many of the Syrians are watching her—Fakhri permits James to steer her to an empty patch of floor.

“Is this England’s new foreign policy, Mr. Bond?” she asks him, looking up into his eyes. The quartet looks a little confused, but strikes up in four-four time; James launches into a foxtrot.

“It doesn’t seem foreign to you, Ms—“

“Fakhri,” she answers. “Lena Fakhri. But I assume you knew that.”

He smiles, and leads a spin. The _charge d’affaires_ follows the direction without missing a beat, but without embellishment.

At this distance, he can see that his initial assessment missed slightly: She has on a bit of makeup, foundation and maybe a hint of lipstick. Eyeliner to bring out the natural width of her deep brown eyes. There are crows’ feet at the corners, and lines at the edges of her mouth.

He assumes they’re not from smiling.

“I thought everyone tonight would be talking shop, Ms. Fakhri,” he says. “I didn’t want to bore you with the usual.”

“But I love talking politics,” she counters. “It’s why I’m here. Not enough people from our parts of the world really talk ‘shop’ to each other, Mr. Bond; perhaps if we did, there would be fewer misunderstandings.”

Her lips twist, a gesture that James finds familiar.

“Fewer ugly incidents such as the recent scene in Damascus.”

Bond smiles. “Well, perhaps I’m just a boring conversationalist.”

“But an able dancer,” Fakhri notes archly.

“I try.”

Bond glances around the room. A few men from the Syrian contingent are still watching, and Lymond has an eye on them as well. Eve doesn’t have her hand to her ear, but the secretive cant to her smile makes him think she might be relaying all this to Q.

“Then the Ministry of Defense is not interested in conversation?” Fakhri presses. “Shoot first, ask questions later?”

“This member of the Ministry of Defense,” Bond replies, “believes we may as well get to know each other as people before we start blowing one another up.”

Diplomatic?

Perhaps not his best.

But Fakhri tips back her head and laughs.

“Oh, Mr. Bond—I’ll dig us two graves, then.”

“One hopes not,” Bond remarks, amused.

“But these are dangerous times,” Fakhri says. “And my government can hardly be assured of your benign intentions.”

“I’d say it’s fairly benign to rid the world of a band of dangerous merchants dispensing dangerous goods.”

“Ah,” she replies, as they turn a sharp corner; her steps falter, but right themselves quickly. “Not an advocate of the free market, Mr. Bond?”

“When the free market involves arms dealers responsible for the deaths of two British journalists,” James replies, “I admit I’m somewhat lukewarm ...”

Fakhri smiles. This one is just as politic as her first.

“Because they were from your own country?”

Bond’s eyebrows arch in challenge. “Yes.”

“I must be frank with you, Mr. Bond,” Fakhri says, “your Mr. Lymond’s discussions of the national interest bore me—‘national interest.’ Such a useless concept, don’t you agree? Lines in the sand that your countrymen drew a century ago.”

“And what do you suggest replacing them with?”

“Something closer to the realities of life,” she replies. “The trouble is, Mr. Bond, a nation has no true soul … a nation has no _heart_. When Syrians give their lives for their country, it isn’t Syria who bleeds: they do.”

“And you’re sure you’re not tired of politics, Ms. Fakhri?” Bond says.

Her lips give another twist, slighter than before.

“Politics as usual, perhaps.”

The last strains of the music fade away. Bond glances to the quartet to see that three of them have set down their instruments; one is drinking from a bottle of water. He leads them to a halt.

Lena Fakhri smiles and steps away from him.

“I hope we continue this discussion later, Commander,” she says. “Thank you for the dance.”

 

“I’m jealous, Commander,” Moneypenny says, eyebrows arching. “You didn’t ask _me_ to dance.”

Fakhri’s glided off to speak to Lymond, who by now has Mallory with him. Bond follows her progress, then flicks his gaze back to Eve. He smiles.

“Promise you haven’t got a gun on you?”

Moneypenny grins.

“I thought you liked living dangerously.”

“Emphasis on ‘living.’”

“Tanner’s got your man, by the way,” Moneypenny says. “He’s not Jordanian.”

“Shocking,” Bond murmurs, with a quick arch of his eyebrows.

“Syrian, actually.”

That gives him a moment’s pause.

Bond glances back across the room.

In the center of the assembled diplomats, Lena Fakhri is standing with her body angled away from him. As he watches, Lymond bends in to say something to her; in profile, Fakhri’s lips curl into a small smile.

The smile does not reach her eyes.

***

 

The annoying thing about handing in Q’s bloody tracking gun for maintenance is that it isn’t an off hour, which means that the workroom is full of technicians and assorted engineers, which _means_ that Q can be as smug as he likes about planting a tracking device on him and James’ options for retaliation are limited.

What _does_ that little smirk mean this time?

 _(That he knew you were you,_ M’s voice supplies.)

“Thank you very much, 007,” Q is saying, turning the gun over in his hands. “Both for returning the equipment intact for a change, and for giving us a successful field trial.”

“One does one’s best,” James drawls.

Q frowns critically at the gun. “A bit exotic for our purposes, but it’s evidently got its uses ...”

James can’t quite tell if the vaguely disappointed look is because of him or in spite of him. Q seems to experience difficulty adjusting to versions of reality that differ from his pretty little screens: A fully functioning bit of returned equipment may qualify.

At the moment Q shakes his head, snapping back to attention.

“I have something else for you,” he says. “Very new, we were hoping you might oblige us with another field test.”

He plucks up a small metal box by his laptop and holds it out; Bond takes it. He doesn’t let his fingertips brush Q’s palm.

Inside the box is a minute, round bit of metal.

“A radio.” Bond grimaces. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I nearly didn’t.” Now Q’s lips look as though they might be hovering around a smile. A smug one. “This particular radio transmits passively—we can hear you, you can’t hear us. I’m still working on a two-way system, but its real advantage at the moment is that it’s quite smaller than its predecessors, adheres to your skin, and activates sympathetically when its companion piece dies.”

“Running low on batteries, are you?” Bond says, eyebrows arching.

“A battery is surprisingly little use when the device it belongs to has been pulverized,” Q notes dryly.

“I’m hurt.”

“And I’m an empiricist.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “In my brief tenure as section head, it’s become clear that you’re liable to destroy at least an earpiece every mission. Now we’ll have a much more efficient means of keeping track of you while allowing you to indulge your taste for destruction.”

“Charming.”

Q shrugs.

“I did promise.”

“You said you’d consider.”

“Yes, well.” Q’s lips quirk humorlessly. “I considered it seriously.”

Bond closes the little box, sliding it into his pocket. By the time he looks up, Q is typing again.

“M wants you, by the way,” he says absently, eyes on his laptop screen now. “There are some new Damascus developments and you’ll need to be briefed.”

“When?”

“Now.”

Bond glances around the room. Still too many minions about.

Regrettable.

“Ah,” he says. “Well … thanks for the radio.”

“I sincerely hope you won’t have to use it.”

Bond’s eyebrows climb, but nothing more seems forthcoming.

He turns to go.

 

(It may be his imagination, but as he nears the door, he thinks he hears a soft mutter of:

“… Right, then.”)

***

 

The new Damascus developments appear promising.

One of the Russians has turned up again. Evidently, he’s due to arrive in Aleppo in two days’ time, to meet with a known contact of their Syrian assassin. The objective of this meeting isn’t quite clear, but that’s what James is being sent to find out.

Personally, he’s interested to learn exactly who they’re working for.

“We’ll be contacting you with specifics on your arrival,” Tanner says briskly. “We aren’t quite sure when or where they’re meeting yet—you may have to wing it, 007.”

“Oh, good.” James smiles, sardonic. “Plans have the most vexing way of going awry. I presume Lymond doesn’t know I’ll be dropping in.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Mallory replies. He rolls his eyes heavenward. “But no, Bond; I’ve officially offered Fakhri and Lymond my cooperation, but the prime minister agrees that neither of them can request my cooperation when they don’t know what we’re up to. Try not to blow anything up.” A pause. “How did you find Lena Fakhri, by the way?”

Bond considers. “Combative.”

“Mm. That’s a talent of hers.”

“That and the foxtrot.”

Mallory snorts. “Lymond thinks she knows more about Damascus than she’s letting on.”

“She wouldn’t be worth much at her job if she didn’t,” Bond observes archly.

“Well, we’ll handle her. Focus on finding that Russian.”

 

One gun, two little radios, one ticket to Aleppo: this is the state of affairs James prefers. It’s simple. Straightforward. No diplomacy, no small talk, no frowning Quartermasters. Give him a weapon and an objective and the world crystallizes beautifully.

Well.

A weapon, an objective, and a cocktail.

Bond sips his in-flight martini (atrocious) and watches twilight purple like a bruise out the window.

Fourteen hours to Syria.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to the incomparable Adiva for reading and workshopping this one with me. As ever, your feedback is wonderful and I am so delighted that y'all take the time to let me know you're having fun.
> 
> This one is kind of rough (emotionally, politically, involves torture), but I had a lot of fun writing it. So I hope you enjoy!

It isn’t getting to Aleppo that’s the trouble.

Arrival and hotel check-in is smooth. So is following Tanner’s directions through labyrinthine streets to a small outdoor café where, intel informs them, the Syrian’s contact and the Russian mercenary Artyom Ivanov will be having a cordial lunch.

This is all routine. He’s done it hundreds of times (it feels like). The waiting game is one Bond plays ably, if not well.

The trouble, frankly, comes when the trio of armed men ambushes him on the roof.

(He supposes he could have been less conspicuous.)

He throws punches that land with satisfying _cracks_ , the impact on his fists satisfying in a slightly more masochistic sense. Odds like these are all about the razor’s edge, the smallest advantage you can wedge between someone else’s ribs to tip the whole thing in your favor. He dodges a knife, wrests it away. Gives it back pointy end first.

Nobody talks in his ear. But he thinks he can hear Q breathing.

The sky is bright and the wind is hot and he’s having a fine time of this trip, all things considered, but bloody hell since when was there a _fourth_ man?

Someone else’s hands scrabble over his cheeks, and a pungent, chemical-scented cloth is thrust hard against his nose.

Bond amends:

Since when was there a fourth and a fifth?

“Fuck,” Bond mutters, as fingers withdraw and the city roofs dip and sway.

 _“Bond?”_ someone says in his ear, Tanner or Q he honestly can’t tell which. Fingers dig into his ear, scraping and scrounging, and the voice is plucked away.

_“Bond, what’s happening—“_

He hears a small mechanical _click_ and _crunch,_ and blacks out.

***

 

James is sinking through deep water.

Deep, breath-stealing, heart-crushingly cold water. He sinks until the water congeals around him, until it becomes as sluggish as his mind.

The word _drugged_ oozes past him, and _underground_. Above the surface, men’s voices are breaking and refracting.

James ignores them.

 

 

 

Eventually, he sinks far enough that he reaches a greenish light, illuminating the depths below him. (There is no bottom.)

This is where he finds Vesper.

_“James.”_

She is smiling but not smiling, her black hair drifting like seaweed around her head. The love knot coils about her neck.

James would reply, but bubbles pour out when he tries to open his mouth.

 

Vesper says, _“You bloody fucking idiot.”_

 _Sorry,_ Bond breathes.

Black water fills his throat.

 

 

 

(“Mr. Bond, are you listening?”

“I told you, you give him too much—“

Water drips down his face and mats his eyelashes together. His lungs heave, and the water rushes in: through his nose, down his throat.

He coughs for a long time.

 

“Sorry,” Bond rasps. “Say what?”)

***

 

This is not drowning.

It’s not drowning because it comes in bursts. There is intermission, ice at the surface; Bond breaks through it again and again.

 _Resurrection,_ he tells Vesper.

His body panics because it’s being shortchanged water for oxygen. But it’s not drowning, because every time it ends.

(Each time it ends, Bond is screaming in ragged bursts.)

 _Resurrection,_ he chokes.

 _“Yes,”_ says Vesper dryly, _“I can see that.”_

 

Drowning, in contrast, is down and down and down.

***

 

Eventually he hears Q’s voice, intimate as an earpiece and as disappointed as, well, Q:

_“They drugged you, Bond.”_

_You’re joking,_ Bond doesn’t say.

_“Sarcasm is unnecessary. Are you hurt?”_

“Always.”

He assesses, which he is faintly surprised to be able to do: pounding headache, raw throat and nose, grogginess, delirium.

His hands are above his head—bound, going by the chafing to his wrists, decent knots—and when he tries to shift his legs, he feels they’re bound as well. Beneath his back it’s flat: feels like a board.

How classic.

 _“I hope you’ve still got the other radio,”_ continues Q’s voice, unruffled against the shell of his ear. _“You’ll need it, if we’re going to find you.”_

“What do you care,” Bond mutters, shivering. “You’re not real.”

Q gives a breathy laugh.

_“It’s hardly a hindrance.”_

***

 

James noticed it before, but before it didn’t stick: The voice above his head speaks with a Russian accent.

Ivanov.

“Don’t you want to know why you’re here?”

Bond coughs a laugh that knifes up through his lungs.

“Not particularly.”

The blow cracks against his ribs—what is that, a baseball bat?—knocking the wind from his already run-ragged lungs.

It wrenches a curse from him that sounds like a sob. He adds _broken ribs_ to his tally.

This goes on for some time.

 

(Back underwater, M hisses, _Pull yourself together, 007._

 _Well I did,_ Bond notes. _But it didn’t last long._ )

***

 

“Good morning, Mr. Bond,” someone says.

Her voice is familiar, but on the ledge between sleep and waking, he can’t place her in the library of dead women it could be.

This is why you can’t trust ghosts, he thinks muzzily. Pale and slim and dark-haired and smug, with eyes that assure you they see everything—

(And M, of course. But M is, and always has been, an exception to everything.)

Fingertips stroking his face, impossibly gentle and …

 

Tangible.

“You look terrible.”

Bond is relatively sure he’s awake this time.

He opens his eyes.

 

Lena Fakhri is smiling her depthless diplomat’s smile. This does not surprise him so much as the suspicion that she’s really here.

Bond blinks at her.

She’s sitting close to him, in a soft chair that looks out of place between the grim, grimy walls of this room. Her hair is hidden beneath a black headscarf, lips painted a bellicose red; the traditional armed men stand at either side of her. One of them is Ivanov.

“Ms. Fakhri.”

Bond notes the hoarseness in his voice. He wonders distantly how long it’s been since he drank water instead of inhaled it.

“Engaging in a bit of preemptive strike?”

“Preemptive.” Fakhri’s eyebrows arch. “I think not, Mr. Bond. I think it was _preemptive_ of you to come to Aleppo.”

A lacquered fingernail slides down his throat.

“Sorry to drop in uninvited.” Bond coughs, taking no particular care to direct it away from her. (He doesn’t think the situation warrants.) “I was going to ask about another dance.”

Fakhri laughs, a single smirking sound: _huh._

“I think your dance card is full right now. Commander.”

“I couldn’t help but notice I never told you my rank.”

“But I am so very interested in you, Mr. Bond,” Fakhri replies. “From what I understand, it’s not uncommon.”

Bond quirks his lips up.

“And what do you want?”

Fakhri’s crimson lips twist into what could only charitably be called a smile. Her nail presses into his throat.

“Would you like to hear a story, Mr. Bond?”

Bond swallows, craving water. (His stomach lurches.) “Will it take long?”

“I’ll try not to bore you.”

Fakhri withdraws her fingers and folds both hands in her lap.

Bond watches gray light play off the polished tips.

“I had my first child very young,” Fakhri begins. “Too young, perhaps.”

Her lips twitch, sardonic. “You think my country is uncivilized, Mr. Bond, but from what I understand, my father handled it in much the way fathers do in England: We kept it a secret, then I gave the child up. I was, oh—sixteen years old.”

“Touching,” Bond drawls.

“I gave her a name,” Fakhri continues, cool. “My own, from those days. So much has changed.”

Bond watches Fakhri’s eyes, the dark flash of them. The tremor at the corner of her mouth.

Not so composed, for a captor.

She says, “Amira Malouf.”

A pause hangs in the room.

“I thought I recognized you,” Bond murmurs absently. “In the eyes … and that little twitch, just there at the corner of your mouth. When your emotions get the better of you.”

Fakhri smiles, sharp.

“My husband thought I would be easy to control—so grateful, because I was flawed goods. I suppose it would have been easier if I could have forgotten Amira as just an old sin … a regret. But I didn’t.”

His neck aches, craning to watch her like this. Bond tilts his head and redirects his attention to the ceiling.

“The family resemblance _is_ stunning,” he notes. “You and your daughter both share a singular talent for betrayal.”

“Your government,” Fakhri snaps, “should never have sent you to her. They had no right to interfere.”

“And your friends should have exercised a little more restraint.” Bond smiles, mordant. “None of us exactly has clean hands, do we.”

Fakhri makes a noise like a snarl, and the next thing Bond feels is her palm hitting his chest, nails digging into his skin. He gasps; his breath scalds his lungs, pain reticulating along his broken ribs.

“You murdered my _child!_ ”

Bond chokes a laugh, baring his teeth.

“Lovely girl,” he grinds. “Though she might have benefited—from a different line of work than running guns. Perhaps a touch of parental guidance?”

Fakhri’s nails bite into his skin.

“She did what she had to do,” she hisses. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

Fakhri gives a low, contemptuous laugh. (Her hand is shaking.)

“If I cut open your chest, Mr. Bond, will I find a heart or a husk? Maybe gears, like old clockwork. I can’t wait to find out.”

Bond’s eyes flick over her face: the red lips, curled in disgust; the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes.

“You’ve been dressed in black every time I’ve met you,” Bond observes. “The image of a grieving mother—yet you’ve managed to carry out a diplomatic mission and one rather fraught kidnapping without giving anything away.”

“Do you have a point, Mr. Bond?”

“It’s awfully bloody-minded for a mourner, isn’t it?” He arches his eyebrows. “One almost begins to doubt the depths of your grief.”

Fakhri grits her teeth.

“What do you know about grief?” she says bitterly, pressing down. Bond hisses at the pain to his ribs. “You think you know something about death because you bring it. You aren’t even a man anymore—just a trained dog.”

“Well.” Bond smiles through the screaming ends of his nerves. “I assure you my bite’s worse than my bark.”

Fakhri crushes in close, speaking straight into his ear. Each word falls singly, coldly, with leaden precision:

“Not here it isn’t.”

They stay like that a moment. Bond’s heart thumps in his chest, his breaths uneven. Fakhri’s hand hovers at his chest, her mouth close enough to burn.

Then she withdraws and stands staring down at him. Her face has resolved into a cold, empty mask.

“You’re right about one thing, Mr. Bond,” she says. “I am bloody-minded. If your MI6 tries to come for you, they’ll learn very quickly that it was a mistake.”

A smile.

“Not that they will find you.”

Bond knows the spot on his hip where the second radio is meant to sit. It’s so light, or he’s lost enough feeling, that he can’t be sure he feels it there now.

He sincerely hopes it’s waterproof.

Otherwise he and Q will have to have words.

(At the moment, he rather relishes the prospect of being lectured by a spotted twig in a ridiculous cardigan.)

“I hope you’ll kill me quickly, then,” he advises. “I’ve had a long day.”

Fakhri smiles again, but her lip trembles.

“Your day, I’m afraid, has barely begun.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Not—not that it’s—“

“What’s that, Mr. Bond?”

“My business to _criticize_ —“

There’s a buzz and a crack, and the next shock hits him like a kick to his shuddering ribs. Bond sees spots, then nothing at all for a moment. Behind the renewed ringing in his ears he can hear Ivanov saying—

Oh, who gives a fuck?

 

Bond shakes, gasping for breath, but once again his lungs won’t obey.

“Did you know, Mr. Bond, that drowning is not reserved for water?” says the voice above, far distant and friendly.

“Take you, now. I press my little button—“

Just the threat and his throat constricts, trachea anticipating the next jolt; Bond has the ability to stay relaxed even under considerable pressure and physical persuasion, but the hours have worn it down somewhat.

These people are remarkably patient.

The jolt doesn’t come just yet.

“Your heart speeds up pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat—“ Ivanov’s still talking. A tempo’s being thumped with increasing speed, the vibrations by James’ ear. “Too fast. Your heart gives out. The way I do it … it goes slow. You cannot breathe. You feel like drowning.”

Now the low electric hum sounds. It hangs on the air, no doubt meant to provoke dread; Bond rasps a laugh.

He wheezes, “Tried it yourself?”

Again, the buzz and the crack, whiplash-strong. This time Bond hears himself curse as spots dance across his vision.

Ivanov says, “Don’t need to.”

Gradually Bond’s vision returns enough to see him again, bent over him with his craggy face and flat gray eyes. Smells like a fucking cigarette factory—

Ivanov chuckles.

“The lady wants your heart, Mr. Bond. But she doesn’t say anything about the rest of you.” Bond doesn’t see the knife, but he feels its edge graze up his stomach, to the jut of his ribs. “Me, I like to start right here. Watch your lungs fill up—drown you in your own blood.” 

“Sounds,” Bond pants, “like a bloody _lark._ When do we start?”

There’s another _crack_ then, but no contingent pain, and all things considered it takes him only the barest instant to recognize what it is (it’s a sound he recognizes in his sleep):

Gunshot. Walther PPK.

If he had to guess, coded to the palm-print.

 

Ivanov pitches onto him, dead weight falling heavy against his ribs; Bond bites his lip to swallow a scream. (An aggrieved groan makes it out instead, and he tastes blood.) 

“Sorry,” mutters a familiar voice, brisk and pleasant and only slightly apologetic. The weight lifts; over the sound of his own sputtering breathing, Bond hears a _thump_.

“I’ve got Bond,” the voice continues.

James says hoarsely, “Alec?”

Trevelyan’s face appears in his line of sight: he’s grinning. A knife snaps the bonds at James’ wrists, then moves down his body for the rest.

“Hullo James,” he says. “I was in the neighborhood. Heard you needed a rescue.”

James wheezes, “Took your bloody time.”

Trevelyan arches his eyebrows at him. Then he shakes his head.

“No appreciation.” 

***

 

Walking proves difficult, but at least Bond can still hold a gun. His shoulders ache, his vision swims, and his side is fucking killing him, but he manages to get two of the remaining mercenaries.

On the way out, Alec tells him MI6 lost radio contact and traced a second, threadier signal to this house in Jordan. Alec, undercover in Turkey, was the nearest field agent to hand.

Fakhri is nowhere to be found. 

(Alec is only a little superior as he helps James stagger along.

“When we get out of here,” Bond gasps, “remind me to buy you a drink.”

“Remind me to accept.”

“And then remind me to punch you in the jaw.”)

 

The plane waiting for them is military issue, staffed with a med team that peers and shines lights and starts measuring his heart rate. Bond answers their questions as best he can, but as they rise into the pale, seared-blue sky, he sinks into a black sleep.

***

 

They landed in Turkey and changed planes, after the med team ascertained that Bond was stable enough to stand it. They’re en route to London now. 

Bond wakes up on the plane, but Alec assures him that he was conscious for at least some of the previous bits.

Cloud scud along below them. Bond declines a cocktail.

“You’re coming to London?” he asks Trevelyan.

Alec shrugs, grinning faintly.

“M wanted to be sure you had a reliable escort.”

Bond laughs, hoarse.

“So why’d he send you?”

Alec snorts. “Bloody charmer.”

“How did you say you found me?” James asks.

“Second transmitter,” Alec replies with a shrug. “Lit up after the first one went out, or that’s what they told me. Took half a day before they were sure enough to assign me the retrieval.” His eyebrows arch. “That new Q’s a clever little bugger. Sounds about twelve over the radio.”

“Looks it, too,” Bond drawls, letting his eyes close. 

Alec snorts again. 

Then he pauses. 

(James waits.)

“Well, he gets it done,” is all Alec says.

“It’s funny,” James murmurs.

“Hm?”

He feels his lips lift in a faint smile.

“I was under the impression he didn’t much like me.”

***

 

Back in London, they take Bond to medical before they do anything else. He is submitted to another deluge of questions and tests and ungentle prodding. His new clothes are exchanged for fresh ones, in only approximately the right size (he won’t let anyone into his flat).

They tell him he’s dehydrated, suffering three cracked ribs and a slew of first-degree burns. They’ll be keeping him a night or two for observation.

Mallory stops by.

“How’re the ribs, 007?”

“Set,” James drawls from his bed. (His breath still grates sometimes, and hurts when he forgets not to breathe too deeply.)

Mallory’s lips twitch. 

“Good,” he says. “Glad to hear it.”

A pause.

“Fakhri’s gone,” Mallory adds. “The Syrian prime minister claims to have no knowledge of her whereabouts.”

“Well he wouldn’t, would he.”

Mallory’s lips twist ruefully.

“We’ll get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, our last good lead died with Ivanov.”

“Let me know what turns up.”

Mallory regards him a moment, something in his expression making him look a good deal older than he is. Then he gives Bond a very slight nod.

“Rest up, 007,” he says. “We need you out there.”

 

James sleeps awhile. He doesn’t recall his dreams.

It’s light out again by the time voices reach him.

One is professional, soothing: “Just a few hours, Quartermaster—“

The other is highly indignant.

“This is ridiculous—“

“Then you can get back to work—“

“It doesn’t even hurt, it’s just gone a bit pink—“ 

With great interest, James feigns sleep.

In the space beyond his bed, the bickering continues. James gathers that Q’s injured himself through a lab accident of some kind. They want to keep him here awhile, just until they can sort him out.

Q makes a series of ungracious remarks, all of which strike Bond as funny; then the ungracious remarks get closer, and somebody drops with a _whumph_ into a bed nearby.

“And you can tell M that I know exactly what he’s up to,” Q says sourly. “And that I _don’t_ appreciate losing a day’s work for what is honestly no reason at all.”

“Dr. Lahiri will be by to treat your burns,” says the same woman’s voice, in the tones of someone repeating an ineffectual mantra. “You can keep 007 company in the meantime.”

A set of footsteps recedes.

For a moment, there’s quiet.

Then Q says, “I can tell you’re not asleep.”

Bond doesn’t answer. 

Q says, “Your eyelashes are twitching.”

Without opening his eyes, Bond rumbles, _“Twitching.”_

“Moving. Fluttering.” Q pauses. “A little obvious, whatever it is.” 

“Perhaps I wanted to get caught.”

“I’d have thought you’d had enough of that for one week.”

Bond opens his eyes.

Q is sitting on the next bed over, legs swung down over the side. His glasses are gone, and he’s wearing an awful, waffle-patterned jumper in some shade of teal. He looks haggard: sallower than his usual pale, hair more disastrous than usual, shadows under his eyes. He holds his right arm close to his body. James finds his expression difficult to read.

“Hello, Bond,” he says.

“Hello, Q.”

“You look terrible.”

Bond quirks a grin, small and sharp. “So do you.”

Q looks briefly embarrassed, maybe guilty, but says dryly enough, “It’s been an eventful 72 hours for us here. Looking for you, coordinating the extraction—“

“Where’re your glasses?”

Now there’s no mistaking the embarrassment. Q’s fingers flutter dismissively on his thigh.

“Broke them,” he replies shortly. “I was under the impression the cable was grounded. Hit a wall, nothing really damaging.”

“No wonder your hair looks like it’s been in a windstorm.”

Q’s lips press ruefully together.

“Just when I thought I’d gained a modicum of respect in this organization.”

“Well you’ve been injured in the line of duty,” Bond notes in a low drawl. “That must count for something.”

“Your sympathy is appreciated.”

James watches the contrast of Q’s fingers—pale, tapping as if impatient for a keyboard—against his trousers. Then he watches Q.

Though his left hand drums against his thigh, he’s still keeping his right cradled close; it’s a blotchy pink up the back, redder in the fingers. Aside from the exhaustion and the nerves, there’s a tension in his face, and something taut in the line of his mouth. 

Easy enough to smooth away, Bond’s found. For a little while at least. Something about _put that mouth to better use_ flickers through his mind.

“Thanks,” he murmurs instead. “For the radios.”

Q blinks.

“Yes,” he says quietly, frowning. “Useful after all.” The twitch of his lips is wry, but doesn’t quite become a smile. “And they wanted me to spend my extra funding on staff.”

Bond’s laugh comes out a faint, satisfied _hmph._

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re more than enough.”

He actually does see Q smile at that—a rare bit of difficulty for Bond, for whom smiles from pretty young things have long been easy currency. This one is slight, private, edging up one side of Q’s mouth and wrinkling his nose.

By the time he looks up at Bond, the smile’s been replaced with an expression of caution. 

“007.”

_Listen,_ James hears in his memory, and recalls Q’s body lithe as live wire, pinned between his and the wall. His fingers unfurling like slow blooms.

“Mm,” says Bond.

Despite the stab it creates in his ribs (and despite the IV, superfluously stuck in his arm), he sits up, angling his body to face Q.

“Oh—no,” Q protests immediately, frowning, “stop, don’t do that.”

Bond arches an eyebrow.

Deliberately, he swings one leg down over the side of the bed.

“That really can’t be a good idea—“

Then the other.

Q reaches out a hand to stop him—the good one, luckily—looking as if he himself doesn’t expect it to have any effect. Neatly, James catches his wrist.

“Bond,” Q warns.

Bond slides forward to the edge of the bed, ribs still protesting at every shift. 

Watching Q’s face—his tiredness is even clearer at this distance—he raises his captured wrist, turns it gently in his fingers, and brushes a kiss to the tender skin inside.

Q is very still.

Then a little shiver passes through him. Q’s expression changes from uncertainty and anxiety and a touch of annoyance to pure, abstracted concentration—as if whatever he’s thinking of is very far from James, or buried too deep within the network of his nerves for him to see.

He kisses his wrist again.

“Bond,” Q says faintly.

“Hm,” James mumbles against his skin.

“Don’t.”

James pauses. Q’s gaze flickers between his face and their hands, lingering on the latter.

“Wrong time?” Bond scrapes.

Q’s lips lilt, mostly down. Bond pulls at his arm, gentle and inexorable and meant to draw him in: off his perch at the edge of his own bed and onto Bond’s.

“I do everything at the wrong time,” he murmurs.

Q doesn’t move.

“You’ve got broken ribs,” he says.

“Stalking my medical chart?”

“You seem to be forgetting I don’t need to.” The twitch at the corner of Q’s mouth is softer and gentler than Fakhri’s, almost regretful—as if he were in consultation with someone else.

Bond says, “The radio.” 

“The audio was very good,” Q agrees, distant. “Fireproof, waterproof, shockproof … I honestly expected to sacrifice more by way of sound quality.”

He gives Bond another smile, though this one isn’t much like a smile at all.

“But the clarity was … impressive.”

Bond looks at him again: wild hair, tired eyes.

“You’re exhausted.”

His voice sounds rough to his own ears. He’s cognizant of his breath hurting him.

Q says: “I’m handling it.”

A thread of emotion reticulates like a fault-line for one moment, soft and treacherous as a whisper. Bond’s typical repertoire provides few answers: There’s no enemy to rescue Q from, no ring of international criminals or vengeance-bent hackers or what have you. 

And the timing, apparently, is not right for seduction. 

“--Ah. Quartermaster.”

Q jerks back at the new voice—and James, after a reflexive tightening of his fingers around Q’s wrist, lets him go.

Trevelyan smiles, mild as mild can be.

“Um,” Q says, blinking. “Hello.”

Alec’s eyebrows arch as James’ hand withdraws, and Q hastily pulls his arm away.

“006, isn’t it?” Q says.

“At last we meet in person,” Alec says with a smile. “I’ve admired your work for some time.” He spares James a nod. “James.”

“Alec.”

“How’re the ribs?”

“Cracked,” James murmurs, mordant.

“Yes, I’m delighted,” Q adds, still sounding faintly put out (with James, if his expression is any indication). “Sorry to pull you away from Turkey.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Alec breezes. “Happy to get the bastards. Besides … now I’ve got the chance to get acquainted with the new MI6.”

His gaze lingers on Q half a beat too long, and Bond doesn’t quite resist the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’m sure we’re all thrilled,” Q says with an absent frown. “Which reminds me, 006—as soon as I’m released, I’d like to have a look at the equipment you’ve been using. We’re formalizing a new standard-issue kit for field agents, and I want to make sure you’re up to speed before you head back.”

“Looking forward to it.” Alec takes a step back. “Well—I just stopped by to see how you were holding up, James. I’ll take a rain check on that drink.”

James is still looking forward to punching him.

“Take care of yourselves, you two—I’m not sure how long England can survive without you.”

With a last slow grin, Alec turns and departs.

“Prat,” Bond mutters.

Q’s eyebrows arch.

Bond assays to look innocent—a transparently awful attempt, as innocence is one of the few disguises he has never been called upon to replicate in the name of serving his country. Q huffs a soft laugh, mainly derisive. But as the silence hangs there, his amused expression fades, and he sits on the bed looking as if he doesn’t quite know where he is.

“I … really ought to,” he begins, and Bond snorts.

“Right.”

Q frowns at him.

Bond’s lips twitch. It doesn’t feel much like smiling anymore; he imagines it doesn’t look much like it either. 

“Can you even see me like this?” he asks. 

“Not well,” Q admits.

“Hm.”

Q waits a moment, but when Bond doesn’t say anything more, he pushes off from the bed, glancing once over his shoulder to get a view through the gap in the curtain. 

Is that a flicker of uncertainty on his face? Or just further disappointment in the messiness of other humans?

(Of Bond.)

“Feel better, 007,” Q says.

Dry, but a touch demanding all the same, Bond says: “Do you regret it?”

Q frowns, hesitating carefully. 

“I’d have liked not to become another notch in your belt, I suppose.”

“Is that what you think you are?”

Q spares him another rueful smile then, eyebrows arching.

“I don’t flatter myself, 007.”

Bond _hmphs_. “Maybe you should.”

Q shakes his head—just once.

“I’ll see you back out there,” he says.

Walking out of medical without approval is hardly advisable, as Bond knows from frequently being told it. But he supposes people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, or men with broken ribs shouldn’t proposition their Quartermasters. Or he shouldn’t be watching him go.

One of those.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so once again, many many thanks to Adiva for the beta'ing and ever-valuable brainstorming and listening-to-me-drunk-ramble-about-secret-agents-and-their-feelings. This is the last chapter of this fic, but wait! There's more! 
> 
> It's been pointed out to me that this isn't exactly an ending, in its shape and direction, so I'll be continuing my take on the socially inept adventures of MI6 agents as a series. (What will I call it? I'm not sure! Feedback welcome on that score.)
> 
> You are all fabulous. Thank you so much for all your wonderful encouragement. See you on the other side. <3


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